Suburban runners, family members react to Boston explosions

April 15, 2013|Staff report

Rebecca Trantowski Farrell had crossed the finish line seconds before the first explosion.

“It sounded like a cannon, and there was all this gray smoke, then another one a couple second later. I didn’t really feel anything, it was just loud,” said Farrell, of Glen Ellyn. “I finished at about four hours, so I thought maybe it was a cannon or something they set off at four hours.

“Then all the race personnel came out and were just yelling ‘Get moving! Get out!’”

Farrell’s thoughts turned to her husband, John, who had planned to meet her near the finish line, which she could no longer see. Her husband, meanwhile, was outside the fenced-in finish area, panicked.

“He had gotten a message that I had just crossed the finish line, then he heard the explosion.”

Instead of their planned meeting point, they found each other at the gear station, where Rebecca Farrell’s cell phone was already filling up with calls and text messages from concerned friends. In the aftermath, Farrell, a veteran marathon runner and triathlete, said she thought of how she had pushed herself to keep running up the Boston course’s signature hills.

“I was really lucky. My goal was just not to walk at all, and some of those hills it was hard. Literally, I was probably just a few hundred yards ahead (of the blasts).”

“I haven’t freaked out yet. I probably will when I get home and see my kids. We just want to get home now.”

Brad Borgman, of Glen Ellyn, said his wife was running in the marathon and was several blocks beyond the finish line when the explosions happened.

“She called right when it happened. She was about 10 minutes ahead of it,” he said.

Sandi Borgman, 39, was not injured. It was her 12th marathon and second time running in the Boston race, her husband said.

“It’s a little nerve-wracking, although I heard from her so I feel better.”

Sandi Borgman is expected to be back in Glen Ellyn on Tuesday, her husband wasn’t sure if that would happen, saying “hopefully they clear this up so she can get out of there.”

Lake Forest resident Andre Bennatan said he was sitting in a food court at the Copley Square Mall, about 50 yards from the finish line, when he heard the explosion. He had gone there with a friend to eat lunch and watch the rest of the race.

They heard the blast not long after they sat down. It shook the building, Bennatan said, but it wasn't strong enough to break the glass windows in front of his table.

Bennatan said he crossed the finish line just before the three-hour mark, about an hour before the blast. He considers himself lucky. But he said he was still shaken by what he saw.

“We heard this big bang and saw people outside running all around,” he said. “There was a big panic. You see people running around crying. It was terrible.”

Joseph Werner, 58, from Tinley Park said he finished the race about 10 or 15 minutes before the explosions. He was still on the finish line street about five blocks away when he heard the explosions “about 10 seconds apart,” he said.

A police officer was there and immediately evacuated them down the street by foot, he said.

"Nobody knew what was going on, to be perfectly honest. I found out what was going on from a phone call from my family, they had it on TV."

Paul Moroney of Oak Park said his son, daughter, daughter-in-law and adult grandchild were in Boston today to watch Amy Moroney, his daughter-in-law, run.

He got a text confirming that all are OK, but he called the situation “unnerving.”

He said he was driving home after running errands and heard about the blasts on NPR.

“And I immediately started making calls,” he said.

“I can’t speak,” he said. “I spent a year and a half in Vietnam…and I never felt like this.”

Moroney said it was his daughter-in-law’s first time running in the Boston Marathon.

According to the race website, Amy, 38, finished the race in 03:51:58.

After hearing about the explosion, Libertyville resident Paula Sterner said she was grateful that her husband, Brad, took a last-minute business trip to North Carolina instead of going to Boston for the race.

“Maybe it was a good idea not to run in the marathon,” he wrote her in an email Monday afternoon with a link to a Marketplace story about the explosion.

“When the CEO calls, you don’t go run a marathon,” Paula said about her husband’s decision. “Of course I’m relieved, but I feel badly for anyone who was there."

John Critchley, 42, of Glenview, who participated in the marathon with his wife Natalie, said he heard about the explosions when they were already in their hotel room.